Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

For those of you who have had the misfortune to witness the "debate" I've participated in with Evil Inc, rest assured, this is not intended to be sarcastic

As we all know, 40k is unusual in that several forces just want to get in a big punch-up, rather than shooting things, and that this results in some pretty amazing war stories.
So the question I put to you, Dakkanoughts, is:

"When has Melee won you the game, and was it awesome?"

I shall start:

It's funny, when I play my Eldar it is almost always ranged that decides the game, while melee tends to be decisive for my CSM.

For my CSM, the most recent example (Which I mentioned in another thread as well, I believe) was when an Ork army rampaged through my lines, Lootas ripping apart my Defiler, Rhino, and even my Raptors. My Cultists and DA was drowned in Boyz and a bunch of Zagstruk-boosted Stormboyz killed my Vindicator, things looked grim. But Kharaxx, the Raging Whirlwind (My counts-as Kharn model ) took his little 10 man squad of Khorne Marines and hacked their way through almost his entire army, over 70 Orks and his Warlord! On that day Kharaxx broke Grotsnik's killstreak, every challenge he had been in thus far had resulted in the demise of whatever Grotsnik had in his crosshairs, but Kharaxx took him! In the end, only his Lootas survived, the game would end in a 1-1 draw... (STW vs him bagging a point for killing my DA in a challenge with the Legendary Fighter warlord trait) but we agreed to play on an extra turn, and my guys catched the Lootas!

What a gore-drenched battle that was! Of the ~130 participating models, 5 survived.

Game last saturday.

My venoms carrying
wyches piled into a wall of eldar skimmers, who had been busy shooting my ravagers to death. Without those girls and their haywire grenades the game would have had a very different ending..

Well, it didn't technically win the game, but in a 2v2 a rear guard of Repentias tore through a unit of those golden boys from Blood Angels that had landed behind my Tau ally to tear up his ranks. The Tau shooting that I saved there then went on to win the game.

That's literally the only time melee has ever changed anything big that I can think of in any of my games. And I used to play Grey Knights. They do know how to punch things.

my last three games were won by melee.

First one two units of screamers multi charged my army with fate and 3 heralds in support . Got tabled against that army.

Second was technicly due to melee . My tanks were destroyed by 2 chaos lords and a chaos sorc inside a biker unit . Although the fact that the turn before 3 helldrakes reduced my infantry to 2 models did help.

And third one was against DE army with E ally . 3 serpents with dire avengers and fire dragons destroyed my transports , with a help of 2x5 wychs and 2 beastmaster packs with khymera and razorwings . Although I blame three big LoS blocking terrain for that one.

When has melee won me the game..?

Hmm. The most obvious one would have to be where my Seraphim assaulted a Stompa and sent it up in a max-size apocalyptic blast and killed everything else on the board (it was a stupidly tiny board) except for a single Sisters Rhino that passed Shield of Faith.

Go Meltabombs.

Or the time when my Repentia got off an assault against Dante's Honour Guard and a Librarian Dreadnought last edition and killed both with their Martyr attacks, exchanging 170 points for something insane like 600, 800 points (I'm not sure how much BAngles cost) in a 1500 point game.

All of my games are won by assault, useing the correct terrain setup in 6th even triptides don't both my deathwing

3rd edition.

3rd terrain rules were great, I prefer abstract than TLOS, it also made the battlefield seem more realistic

The only unit left on the board was a single tactical marine with a flamer. My platoon command squad heroically charged him to get a stylish finish and Lieutenant Stephenn Jafrul (junior officer) finished the marine off with his power axe. Technically it won me the game

All of mine as I use nids with three guns in my list and deamons with a few horrors out of a portal, so in my case it's not a choice as cc is it.( it's not easy but can be done).

I've been wandering about with Abby and 10 MoS Terminators.

If something comes near me, I boop it on the head with some power maces, then wait while I get hit.
Then I get to hack/bash everything to death with axes and fists.
Not to mention the two games where all my terminators died and Abby then decided to get some good rolls off on his deamon weapon and carry on without them.

Best fght
Lucius vs Corbulo

Lucius - 5 attacks + shred + the armour of shreiking souls + whip
Corbulo - 2+ fnp + rending

That fight went on for a while...

 Formosa wrote:
All of my games are won by assault, useing the correct terrain setup in 6th even triptides don't both my deathwing

Can you define correct terrian set up?

It was my Herald of nurgle holding an objective with 10 plague bearers I had rolled on the greater rewards table and got re-roll failed invun saves. They had FNP and were just there to bunker down. I had lost 3 to bikes making passes on them when on the second turn the gremlins, and by gremlins i mean chaos spawn, came a-running.

For 3 turns (5 rounds of combat) they were slowly hacked away at until only the herald was remaining. He had some CSM in range of the objective but had failed the charge for them to get in (rolling 3) so it was just the spawn and him. I was winning by one (first blood) and if he took this objective it was game over, as we agreed to finish on turn 5. He put 6 wounds on Him and I only had one wound left. The first roll took out half. The second two more. It came down to FNP.

I rolled and cocked the die on what would have been one, rolled again and got a 5. He contested the objective and won the game. There's more that one way to win combat

A 1000 point space marine vs nids battle wound up with almost the entire space marine army annihilated through melee. The table was very small though.

Any battle that gets Abby vs Swarmlord into combat.

Abby with 6 attacks needing 4s to hit 2s with shred to wound

Swarmlord with 4 attacks needing 3s to hit and 3s to wound forcing Abby to re roll successfully made INVs.

Always comes down to Swarmy making his 4++ long enough (3 turns).

I have seen it decide the game mant times from rogue trader to today.
My most memorable is playing 2 chaos warbands. earlier in the game my buddies dark elder surving 3 krack missle shot hits and at the end, the game was finally decided by close combat between our respective champions. I had a more normal guy on a chaos steed while my buddy had a huge mutated minotaur. He just KNEW he had me because his guy coulda smashed mine to hamburger. With my higher initiative, I got first swing and nicked him with my daemon lade and sucked him into it before he could do anything at all. To this DAY we still talk about that and he swears his character will eventually be released to get his revenge. I counter with ,nah, I retired that sword, its collecting dust in a closet.

The editions in betweenthen and now usually saw close combat win the game as often as not. Often against such armies as orks and bugs, you might as well have not even brought any guns because you just weren't gonna get any shots off with them.

Now, I usually see close combat win or decide about 1/3 of the games. An example being my last tourney.

Game 1- Opponant had first turn and set his necrons/ dark angels/ fortress of redemption aggressively with a lot of stuff out in the wide open to maximize the first turn speed to be down my throat on turn 2. I stole the initiative and it was not pretty for him. Had he deployed into more cover, I would not have pummeled him with my guns nearly as bad and it he woulda been able to reach me and hack/gauss me to bits

Game 2- I was able to shunt my ntercepters and dreadknights acoss at part of his army and pummel the rest with my guns so the win was decided by a combination of shooting and close combat. This was against a space worlf player.

Gme 3-.wave serpent elder. I was lucky enough to take down both wave serpents with shooting. Unfortunaly for me, the other guy had first turn so by the time I shot them down, they were already in my face where they could start shooting.
This was a very cinematic game where ose combat decided the game. My dreadknights ate through several units he piled onto them and they eventually went down. That took me off of one objective but his elites that were left around it could not claim it. My center held against his masses of shooting guys marching forward but only because I was behind the ADL with camo, my right flank saw a huge close combat battle beteen a dire avenger squad and my crusader/ acolyte squad. We fought it down to the last man (literally, he had ONE guy left) what won me the game without having to go to victory points was that he rolled low on his consolidation (a 2, all he needed was a 3) to get onto the objective.

So overall, as I said in the other thread I see close combat deciding a fair number of games still, just not the preponderance of them as it used to do. Shooty armies with some speedy close combat elements, I find the most effective but regardless the stratrgy and tactics need to match what you have and you need to be able to effectively employ them (along with anything else in the game have the dice like you) to win.

Overall, melee has been instrumental in my games far too many times to count. However, there are a few that really stand out.

500 points, BA vs Tau in 5th. By turn 2, my army was all but dead (I'd brought a SG squad), with Astorath the Grim as my only surviving model. He proceeded to wipe out the entire Tau army, bouncing from assault to assault and gleefully hacking off heads.

Simlar to the above, I've had Mephiston take out 1000 points of Tau in the same way, after the other 750 points of my army (DP Tac squad, LR assault Squad) had been annihilated on the drop. By turn 3, it was just the Mehpiston Wrecking Ball swinging into Tau lines, and by turn 7 he stood knee-deep in dead xenos.

More tactically than just smashing stuff up, I once had a squad of Grey Hunters about 12" from an objective in a game where they had been all-but-tabled by tau, and there was a Hammerhead 8" away. They charged it, wrecked it, and consolidated the remaining distance to be just on the edge of the capture area, forcing a draw from being 3-0 down at the end of the shooting phase.

I've also had Space Marines run down entire necron armies, one highlight being 5 purifiers and an Ordo Xenos inq killing 10 immortals, an Overlord, 30 warriors and a triarch Stalker.

Yay, I have another 'close combat wins the game' story.

600 points Sisters vs Grey Knights. My Canoness comes on with a Dominion squad behind a Malleus Inquisitor and the Strike Squad he was accompanying. I kill half of them with shooting, then they shoot and assault me. I lose the Dominion Superior to the shooting and tank the rest on my power armour. I vapourise the Inquisitor and a Grey Knight with overwatching meltaguns. The Justicar challenges... wounds once... force weapon negated by the Mantle of Ophelia...

Canoness strikes back with her four chainsword attacks, four hits... three wounds... three failed saves.

Oh, and the other three Grey Knights all whiff their attacks and get murdered by the four surviving dominions, too.

What about the rest of his army? He was Grey Knights, all he had was two other squads that spent the game being whittled down at long range as they cowered from my exorcist in a wood!

I frequently win in melee. With my Salamanders, I find that there are very few problems that can't be solved with the suitable application of Assault Terminators.

It's pretty common for me to charge vehicles in order to ding down the last hull point, even in non-SM armies. Honestly, I think that melee is still an extremely viable option.

Not won, but the last apoc game was decided when my deathwing defeated the Swarmlord and his squad.

Anytime my chaos spawn, great unclean one, guard blob, conscript blob, obliterators, CSM termies, SM bikes, SM bike captain, TH/SS termies, SM scouts, riptide, and a few other units get into melee vs shooting focused "meta" armies.

Winning is fun, especially when you do it with a method considered weak.